Crashplan Home 1 year on... Advice

[Tim1962]

Last year (?) Crashplan stopped supporting CP Home but gave a discounted rate for CP Business. I continued to use it for online backup at the discounted rate, and I use URBackup and Timemachine locally to the FreeNAS box. (I haven't used the FreeNAS Cloud sync option yet...)

My challenge is to cope with two errant daughter at Uni etc where CP works well for them but is a bit expensive and can't easily backup to the local NAS

Anyone else considered and managed this sort of dilemma. I could dump CP and go for URBackup and FreeNAS Backblaze sync to online but that would leave the girls out in the cold and at risk, or continue to cough up for CP for all of us and not worry

I haven't checked the bills recently but think CP prices are about to jump back up to the full cost...

BW Tim

 

[fracai]

I've been using duplicacy with B2 for several months now, since my Home account expired, and have been very happy with the combination. duplicacy required a bit more attention to set up the exclusion file, but there are contributors who have provided templates that get most of the work done.

Alternatively, you could run a VPN to provide access to your box from the university.

 

[adrianwi]

What are storing locally at Uni that needs backing up to your FreeNAS system? My partners machine is on our local network, but in order that everything is stored on my FreeNAS server, she saves everything it folders that are sync'ed using Nextcloud running in a FreeNAS jail and mounted to the FreeNAS pool. This would work well remotely so long as the files aren't huge, and might even work then as the sync would just happen in the background.

I then use Crashplan for Small Business (still discounted, but expect I'll continue at the full price as $120/year is still pretty good for 3TB+ cloud storage) to backup key files on the NAS.

This is provided for 2 local copies and 1 in the cloud. Actually, my FreeNAS is backed up locally too, so I have 4 copies in total ;-)

 

[danb35]

Alternatively, you could run a VPN to provide access to your box from the university.

...and Zerotier semi-support baked into FreeNAS should make this very easy.

 

[Tim1962]

I've been using duplicacy with B2 for several months now, since my Home account expired, and have been very happy with the combination. duplicacy required a bit more attention to set up the exclusion file, but there are contributors who have provided templates that get most of the work done.

Alternatively, you could run a VPN to provide access to your box from the university.

Thanks,

If I explore duplicacy can I do Backblaze B2 from FreeNAS and the DUplicacy to the same Backblaze B2 "account"

The advantage of CP is that it is fire and forget (at least for the girls) and I get reports if it fails anytime

 

[Tim1962]

What are storing locally at Uni that needs backing up to your FreeNAS system? My partners machine is on our local network, but in order that everything is stored on my FreeNAS server, she saves everything it folders that are sync'ed using Nextcloud running in a FreeNAS jail and mounted to the FreeNAS pool. This would work well remotely so long as the files aren't huge, and might even work then as the sync would just happen in the background.

I then use Crashplan for Small Business (still discounted, but expect I'll continue at the full price as $120/year is still pretty good for 3TB+ cloud storage) to backup key files on the NAS.

This is provided for 2 local copies and 1 in the cloud. Actually, my FreeNAS is backed up locally too, so I have 4 copies in total ;-)

Hmm, I use Nextcloud myself so that is certainly possible (Though I'd need to ensure I don't break stuff as I play!!!)

Basically its lots of young peoples stuff (tm), photos etc that they would find devastating to lose even though they take no action to secure!!!!

 

[adrianwi]

I think it would work great with photos and phone camera video, documents and stuff, but probably not so well if you were looking at larger media files (e.g. multi-GB files), or at least it works well for me like that, albeit on a local network rather than remote connections.

 

[Tim1962]

...and Zerotier semi-support baked into FreeNAS should make this very easy.

DO you mean as a FreeBSD Port? Or have I missed something?

 

[danb35]

DO you mean as a FreeBSD Port?

No, Zerotier is part of the base install, but there's no GUI support for it--everything has to be done at the CLI.

 

[Tim1962]

Gulp, no excuses then!!!!

Off to google for a noddy guide to VPNs and noddy guide to Zerotier (unless anyone has one to hand..). On holiday next week so that'll be me sorted

 

[Tim1962]

Wow, a bit stressy (dead easy but don't like upsetting my FreeNAS) but basically all installed and working...

Two quick questions if anyone knows

I have an intranet running on my home network (in a jail), how can I access that via the VPN (is Zerotier in each jail???)
I can connect to the FreeNAS smb shares from my MacBook, but not from my iPad. Any pointers???

Thanks for the suggestion was always slightly fearful of vpns!!!

 

[fracai]

Yes, FreeNAS and your duplicacy instances can all backup to the same B2 bucket. You wouldn't get any deduplication advantages, but I don't think you'd have a problem with the files mingling. It'd certainly be cleaner to use separate buckets though.

I'd forgotten that ZeroTier is included though. I need to look at that again. It sounds like you have that working and should be less work than duplicacy regardless.

I'm not sure how ZeroTier would interact with jails. I was about to say you'd need it in each one, but the one in FreeNAS should already get you access to the LAN I think.

Are you running ZeroTier on the MacBook in order to connect to the shares? There is an iOS ZeroTier app ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zerotier-one/id1084101492 ). Are you running that?

 

[Tim1962]

Yes, FreeNAS and your duplicacy instances can all backup to the same B2 bucket. You wouldn't get any deduplication advantages, but I don't think you'd have a problem with the files mingling. It'd certainly be cleaner to use separate buckets though.

I'd forgotten that ZeroTier is included though. I need to look at that again. It sounds like you have that working and should be less work than duplicacy regardless.

I'm not sure how ZeroTier would interact with jails. I was about to say you'd need it in each one, but the one in FreeNAS should already get you access to the LAN I think.

Are you running ZeroTier on the MacBook in order to connect to the shares? There is an iOS ZeroTier app ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zerotier-one/id1084101492 ). Are you running that?

I’ve got the respective apps for MBP and iPad. From what I can gather iOS doesn’t natively see network file directories so I think that’s the issue more than ZeroTier I’ll check it out next. They are all “active” on ZeroTier site so I think that parts ok